


30. cock i guess

by Phritzie



Series: Pale Blue Dots [4]
Category: Runescape (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Atheism, Barrier Methods, Crossover, Felix Gets Kind of Intense In This One, Glory Hole, Nyctophobia, Older Characters, Other, Past Character Death, Privately Kept Alternative Sex Life, Runescape + Kinktober 2020, Self-Harm, Sexual Assault, Sexual Dysfunction, Voice Kink, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 06:01:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26967139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phritzie/pseuds/Phritzie
Summary: "Blind is his love, and best befits the dark." (Benvolio, line 33, Act 2 Scene 1,Romeo and Juliet)
Relationships: Felix/The Stranger
Series: Pale Blue Dots [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941913
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	30. cock i guess

**Author's Note:**

> Fair warning that this story ended up having big time horror/thriller genre vibes, and that if a clinical approach to safe sex, or any part of sex being controlled for in an exacting way distresses you, it's probably better that you not read this. 
> 
> Because there is... a lot of that.

It wasn’t how she’d been raised, but her world turned on a monochronic schedule. 

Work, then play. That was important — had been ethically integral in her twenties and a sort of lifeline in her thirties, when the work had veered and sped into something greater than a career. A solicitor could afford to daydream, consider her forthcoming evening, plan a meal. An advocate couldn’t. Not if she wanted her clients to receive the sort of judgement the court was so tightfisted with around sex workers. 

Felix hadn’t been especially bright as a kid, and that hadn't magically cleared up in adulthood. But she’d learned how to compartmentalize some things. Got better at setting goals, making the right mistakes. On low days, she felt like duty took too much, bound to work in ways that excluded vice and joy. And it didn’t always help to remember she’d chosen that for herself. Law often didn’t make sense, was unjust, made victims of its laymen. But she could change that. She would change that.

Work, then play. The precious rhetoric of her thirties and then the mantra of her forties, when thoughts of retirement started to chafe and it was so much easier to slip away from drinks than stay, ignore zir lingering look in the post room, his earring catching the light. _Ah, can’t. My children,_ that didn’t exist. _Sorry, but my spouse_ , who she’d never met.

Relationships with people were a paradox for her. There were many people in her life, and also no people in her life, or at least not for very long. Often, it seemed one depended on the other.

She lived alone. Didn’t go to church. Absolutely did not believe in higher powers. She’d stewed over adopting, for a year or two, and decided it didn’t make much sense for her. Babies, toddlers, and teenagers all deserved too much of her time. Time she wouldn’t have known how to give.

She’d sheltered a few younger flatmates — helped people that needed a lift up, called them to talk shit and laugh, sent them cards at holidays — but they’d all moved on, eventually, and in time her privacy became valuable, became sacred.

Then, she’d go to work and be surrounded by people all day long. Cases, discovery, court, recess. Court, tube, home, shower. Listening to the client was the bright spot. Helping the client, to the best of her ability, and then the next client, maybe ten in a day. People thanked her more than they didn’t. The world was shifting toward fellowship, and her efforts in that framework had meaning to others, or at least she hoped so. 

Work, then play. And it always came time to play. Stress would’ve claimed her years ago without it.

Hobbies were funny things. Many had fizzled out, but she'd stuck with a few, some of them more acceptable to discuss than others. Baking, running, horticulture. The garden on her balcony was really taking off. If she ever bought a home, God help the lawn.

A palm hit the wall behind her. A stranger, because they were all strangers, thrust into her with halting urgency for one more rotation, moaned raggedly, and went still. 

Blood buzzing, Felix exhaled through the ring of her mouth and pulled away. 

The rules of conduct were very tidy. Things that’d long ago shocked her sensibilities now deeply appealed to them, had eased her into the reality of sex as recreation in ways dating hadn’t. Of course, there was slack in the formal agreement where people could indulge their own side arrangements, at their own risk. But generally, everybody had to abide by the clubhouse, and the clubhouse said it went like this:

_Test regularly and disclose accurately._

_Respect anonymity._

_Use the protection you want to have._

_Reserve the right room for the play you want._

_Use the room you reserved._

_Clean up after yourself._

_Be courteous._

Rapid tests were offered every day at the neighborhood clinic. Felix preferred the security of an internal barrier, though often, and for obvious reasons, they’d want to have a condom on, and that was fine with her, if they were fine with anal. Not all who frequented the club had a penis. She’d been fucked with strap-ons and by people that wanted to use their hands. 

And personally, she enjoyed the rule of anonymity. She was never pressured to speak, or pretend, or come. In the heat of the moment, it was easy to forgive her partners a gasp, to ignore some light cursing. Sometimes people would say names, and it wasn’t their fault she could hear that. Sex could be deeply emotional. Sometimes people cried. 

That was, Felix conceded, only human of them.

And then she went home. Ate a tomato tart, went back to work in the morning. The play waited patiently. It never got lonely. Wouldn’t burn, atrophy, or wilt in her absence. It made her feel good. It gave her a lot of control. 

Of course it didn’t pay, but then it wasn’t sex work. 

* * *

Taking more than one timeslot in a day was more like insurance than gluttony. Most people weren’t able to perfectly coordinate their physical reactions to their mental desires; arousal didn’t always happen right away. Felix had taken to carrying lube in her purse pretty early into sexual maturity, and the double entendre wasn’t lost on her. It was normal for a partner to leave before their time was up. Or finish early and want to decompress in the dark. 

They left, and she did her part. Saturdays were good for it because they gave her the time to relax. In the beginning it’d been such a furtive, guilty stain on her itinerary that Felix had rushed everything. Twenty minutes, most of them full of anxiety, and a scribbled note: _it has to be fast._

Presently, she took her time. Cleaned up. Changed condoms. Cracked the seal on a bottled water and stretched. 

Twice was enough. Something to warm her up and something to cool down from, so to speak.

The door to the other room closed.

Felix inhaled slowly and thought. Had it been half an hour? With age came phenomena like lost time, but surely. They were already moving about in there.

So that the light wouldn’t be obtrusive if they’d taken their visor off, she checked her phone in the blind-spot and raised an eyebrow. No, it had not. It was about ten past.

To make them aware of her, and partly because Felix was a bit miffed, she screwed the cap back on her bottle of water and set it down by the recovery chair. 

They went quiet in the middle of undoing their belt, their shock loud in its silence. 

“Hello?”

“Is someone here?”

 _Good God._ Well, maybe they’d skimmed the rules a bit. Or didn’t care. It was their choice. She wasn’t keen, but this rarely happened. They’d either get the message or leave.

Smoothing down the horse’s cover and leaning forward on it, she got down to the business of making herself comfortable. Its own sort of reply, the wordless noise would be just loud enough to hear from their side. _I’m here for this. Where are you?_

“Right.” The belt whispered through their loops, the buckle making a little music as it hit the floor. “I forgot.” 

Felix bit her lip and smiled. _There you go._

Purportedly, rooms ranged from a full coverage barrier with a screen to what’d basically been described to her as a porthole. She'd never been the confessing type, and giving strangers that much access to her body scared her.

Having opted for a classic from the start, it was interesting to witness someone totally new to it navigate the wall, its cool metal texture less tolerable to the uninitiated.

“Oh. This is a bit… low.” 

That wasn’t a common complaint. High, she’d encountered, and there were stools for that. But not low. An unkind spurt of laughter tried to escape. Felix took a moment to compose herself, thinking hard about potential solutions to her partner’s problem.

They didn’t need them. Troubleshooting whatever distance had to be made up, she heard them drag their chair over to the wall, and then she heard it creaking. Her imagination produced an indistinct image of someone kneeling down on a fold-out. _Smart._

It wouldn’t have been unusual for them to need a couple of minutes to prepare their body. People that brought toys were meticulously precise with their care, and people with penises might’ve had a hard time maintaining an erection when faced with a sudden roadblock.

This was not the case for them.

Felix stiffened and relaxed in the time it took for her to breathe in. The head prodding her through the hole felt about as thick as it was attached to someone with genuine reservations regarding what it was touching. 

They sounded unsure. “Is that alright?”

Chewing on her lip, Felix considered the ramifications of getting up and leaving. 

Instead, she exhaled shortly, which they definitely heard, and reached a hand down to run her fingers along the ring of her condom, her outer lips. They were just able to spread around it, straining the web at her knuckles, and she frowned. It was possible she’d been mistaken; in her experience, those were more likely to be the dimensions of a toy. 

They reacted to her irritation in a different way than she’d expected. A shuddering breath muffled through the wall preceded an exploratory rock of their hips, and Felix was both glad of her routine and that they’d booked their time for after she’d been recently penetrated. The size wasn’t preposterous, but they were big. 

Aware that she’d tensed up, she dropped her shoulders and wiggled closer. Relaxing her posture would improve the angle for both of them, especially if it was a particularly inflexible dildo.

A huff drifted through the wall. Something implausibly wide ran up its surface like a shot.

 _Was that their_ **_hand_** _?_ As soon as she thought it Felix’s spine tingled terribly of shame and discomfort. Of course it’d been, and if it wasn’t, well. Not her business. _They’re just tall. Tall and very talkative_.

Not all of the tingling was bad. The slow, shallow strokes opening her up again were sending fingers of heat up her back, and they didn’t tread water forever. In a few minutes, through no massive effort of hers or theirs, they slid deeper, parts of their lower body brushing against the steel with every pass.

“Bloody Christ,” they whispered. “Fuck, that is excellent.”

Felix flushed terribly. _Okay. Probably not a toy_. 

Every so often some one-sided communication for logistic purposes was acceptable. She’d tricked herself into thinking she could ignore them once she got going, but this running monologue broke her immersion. It made her tense, made her stop feeling everything. The more they spoke, the more she reached for release, and the farther away it got. Felix had even started to think about the way they sounded, and goodness sake, _anonymity._

It’d been years, and she still didn’t know what she would do if she recognized someone’s voice from the clubhouse. Run, probably. 

They skipped forward in the middle of a stroke, whimpering low in their throat. Felix desperately wanted a drink of water. Some earplugs. Anything to make their over-participation and her resulting hypersensitivity to their every exhalation bearable. 

Pausing, seated at what she estimated to be as deep as they were able with the wall as a barrier, they hissed thickly through their teeth. “Yes.” Ground against her in a way that ached. “I want to hear you.”

Hot and confused, Felix ran the tape back and realized what she must’ve done. Swallowing her embarrassment, she rocked forward and back on the horse once, attempting to be polite about it, but they didn’t move.

“Please, feel free. I’d love that.” Something far above the hole bumped the wall. “I understand you’d prefer to remain unknown, but this is beginning to feel quite a lot like having an incredibly good wank.”

Well. That was mortifying. Felix had never judged her own silence for dehumanizing, not just preferring but in need of her privacy. Still, she supposed they had the right to think it. Their behavior was acting as a paralytic, forcing her into her head. 

Her bottom lip on its way to bleeding, Felix grabbed the elbows of the horse’s armrests and got into a good position for it. They caught on quick, pressing up tighter against the wall. She pushed back experimentally and her breath went with it. 

“ _God_ in heaven.” 

Felix squeezed her eyes shut, like maybe that would tune them out. 

“That’s—yeah. God, isn’t that better?”

It was, so much, but they didn’t have to say it. They were so raspy. It kept occurring to her, and she couldn’t hold it out of mind any longer. Their voice was wickedly, deliciously coarse, and it was affecting her in ways Felix thought she’d got herself over decades ago, in uni. Walking with her girlfriend in the rain just to huddle under the new smoking shelters. Listening to her talk, hanging on every catch as she rasped between drags about how tough a time she’d been having in PoliSci. Getting so turned on she shook. 

“Fuck, I could come like this.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Felix snarled.

And when she froze, more mortified than what mortification meant, they were the one quicker to apologize.

“I’m sorry.” 

They didn’t sound sorry, not even remotely. They sounded breathless. 

“Please don’t stop.”

Like an instinct, she got moving again. What was happening was dangerous to her. Had to stop. Ergo, Felix would make it stop, leave, and book for a different timeslot the next chance she got. _It has to be fast._ She wouldn’t talk again. She’d finish them and go.

They didn’t speak until the end. It was a wonder they’d had either the good fortune or the audacity to claim the previous occupant’s time, because until she left that night Felix had been half convinced they’d run over, _fast_ playing on a loop under their restrained breathing, something to distract her from how her knees were going to feel in the morning.

It started as a soft, whining mutter, the kind of nonsense Felix never had difficulty reducing to the white noise of sex and so quiet it hardly carried anyway. 

“ _Close_ ,” they crooned, loud enough people passing in the hall might hear and clearly biting back more. “God, so close—”

Winded, eager to be done, and unsure if they were asking for permission or just saying it for their health, Felix sharpened her movements. Almost as soon as she did so, their hips started matching her, tight with the sort of unrestrained boldness that meant they were going to come soon. She cursed her body for its deficiencies under pressure, and in the same moment their huge hands started scraping at the wall again, ripping her out of that self-awareness with an accompanying bark of frustration.

“Oh, I want to _touch you_ ,” they sneered. “Want to, I want—”

Every liter of blood in her body flooded her chest with anger. It was like they couldn’t control themself. It was humiliating. It was also the only thing in the world she could hear.

“If I could hold you right now, I would kiss you, I would—”

Something round and thin forced its way alongside the seam between their genitals. 

Felix scarcely had a chance to grip the horse tighter before she came so hard her ears rang. 

* * *

Leaving was a blur. 

She remembered shaking a lot. 

At least by the time she arrived at work the following Monday, what’d happened was ushered to a place of insignificance, considered the problems of play. Despite everything, the cycle continued. Work, then play, but also the return to work.

“I’m fine, Ms Christie,” Felix breathed, staring into the distance to refresh her palate. Higher caseloads this year. The world was shifting. 

“It’s just that—” She dropped something and squeaked.

Felix sucked the inside of her bottom lip between her teeth. Found it difficult to focus, juggling both a conversation and reading.

“You look sad today? D’you want a pick-me-up?” 

The younger generation wasn’t any more or less self-soothing than hers had been, but by God, the level Meg took it to, sometimes. She’d just got in.

“I could grab you something from Pret?”

“When Ms Aurora gets here,” Felix deferred, mentally flipping through her appointments. “Ask her if she’d like anything, and if she does, we’ll have a pinch of caffeine.” Winced, reconsidering. “Just a pinch though, please.”

Meg bounced back to her desk, concerns for her momentarily pacified by the creation of a task. Felix had believed giving her plenty of downtime between the busiest parts of her schedule would be good for her, as a student, and she held to that, but maybe it was time to take another look at her workload. It would be equally bad if Meg was bored.

As she’d expected it to, meeting with Ms Aurora grounded her, balanced and sweetened her toward properly undertaking the counsel of her other clients. By the time her last appointment for the day went home, concentrating was as simple as doing it. The rest of the week passed similarly. 

It was Friday evening before Felix realized what she’d done.

“I can’t,” xe said, apologetic but firm. “You need to give twenty-four hours notice next time, alright? We’ll let your partners know not to expect you, but that time is yours.”

Stress and fear worked their hands into her neck, the peaks of her shoulders. 

“I’m sorry,” Felix muttered, flicking up a blind to look out her window at the neighborhood below. “I’ll try, it—was sudden. The death.”

Xe didn’t seem especially convinced, but xyr voice gentled regardless. Xe explained what the surcharge would be, reciting the boilerplate. How her standing meant she’d not face a penalty as long as subsequent appointments were kept or cancelled well in advance. The rules of conduct. Her right to privacy.

_My privacy._

Felix chewed herself to sleep on that, curled tightly under the covers. 

* * *

She hit Saturday morning wrong, irritated. The rain had watered her plants all week — she’d had to pull her camparis to the side to save them from bursting, and her run was cut short by a deceptively large pothole that’d been leveled by a puddle. Miraculous her ankle had survived it. She put it up for an hour anyway, struggling through a buttered toast and treating the limb like it was broken. She reviewed Ms Aurora’s case.

Noon rolled by slowly. Felix stopped watching the clock and in retaliation, it stopped moving. Apparently, she needed to buy batteries. She took her watch off. All at once or not at all, wasn’t it? 

Felix defaulted to routine. Preparing to go absolutely nowhere, she charged her phone, combed her fingers through her hair. It wasn’t time to work, but it also wasn’t time to play.

When Felix’s phone flashed back 7.56 p.m. the vague nausea she’d been nursing all day soured. It should’ve made her angry. If she wasn’t planning on going, it should’ve ticked her off. Instead, she was brutally nervous, kept looking at her keys, pacing by the door on her perfectly serviceable ankle like she was about to miss a hearing.

 _Don’t,_ Felix begged. _Don’t do it._

She successfully flaked on her 8.00 p.m. partner. It didn’t feel like a victory. They hadn’t done anything to her.

_Read a book._

Felix tried, cracked open _The Great Divorce_. Ended up reading the same page over and over again, about shrinking and getting closer to heaven.

9.07 p.m. came, and not a moment too soon. 

She arrived incredibly late.

The door closed behind her. Felix moved with the furtiveness of her first time, heartbeat thundering in the dark, not even a single one of the sounds she made on purpose. 

She hoped to God no one was there. That they’d received the call and begged off, that the club had billed her for everyone’s time. She undressed like a shaking leaf. Touched nothing in the room. Cut short a scream when the neighboring chair creaked.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” they said, on the other side of the wall. “I wasn’t sure you were going to show.”

Felix’s hands flew to her face and pressed down, on her forehead, her temples, her mouth.

“I’d like to try this again, if you’re amenable,” they continued, hushed, like her silence was a muzzling force on them and they were concerned _now_ , suddenly, with their potential for impolitesse. “If you’d truly prefer I not speak, I’ve brought an aid.”

So perhaps it was involuntary, or at least partially. Felix tried to think of a way to communicate her stance on that.

She put in a condom. Slicked it with lubricant, smearing the gel between her thighs on accident. The noise of fumbled packaging was loud and somewhat private for her, something she tried to do with no one else around. It begged the question of how someone was to respect her privacy if they didn’t know what was private. 

_Of course they know it’s private._ Sex itself was private.

They released a tremulous sigh, and Felix realized they’d put something in their mouth, that she could tell it was there between their teeth. She was already growing overly familiar if she knew what their sighs sounded like when their mouth was empty.

Her palm smoothed dry and clean over where the saddle bridged with the hole. She tugged on the cover to make sure it was secure. Got on the horse.

They put their knee up on the chair, and it was like Felix could see them on the other side, cursed with some kind of sympathetic proprioception.

She couldn’t come. 

They had sex that on its surface lacked absolutely nothing, and Felix couldn’t even get close.

Sometimes the orgasm wasn’t the point. That was the truth for her. Being penetrated well bordered on a religious experience, was physically demanding, and even without the goal of release had its moments of consistent and uniform gratification. And though that might not’ve been universal, she’d seen it from the top herself. Fucking a sweet, gentle dyke until her knees gave out either wasn’t meant to or hadn’t been able to make her orgasm. It had made her happy, once, and she’d submit as much candidly.

But at present she’d been hoping to come. 

Felix used a hand and the condom’s ring to push her lips together around her clit, push it closer to the cock moving inside her. Through the wall the stranger’s panting slushed into a groan that whistled in their gag, slowing, thrusts shallow and abortive.

Leisure was a masochistic choice. She’d really been abysmally late; they were both running out of time again, not that it seemed to matter to them.

It surprised her when they pulled out. Felix almost rose. The noise of their chair’s legs juddering against the floor floated through the hole a half-second before a long pair of fingers twisted her condom free and slipped into her. 

“Mother _fucker_ ,” she snapped. Heard herself after the fact, like the tiny compartment of the room could carry an echo.

It was a circumstantial judgement formed on bias, but they really seemed to get off on scaring her. “Are you?” 

Felix hadn’t even heard them take the gag out, but they ripped the word from her mouth like one, with those fingers, and her shock, and what her mind could only process as gibberish phrased like a question. “What?”

“A mother,” they clarified, cranking their wrist to thumb broadly at her clit. 

_Left handed_. They were left handed, or suitably ambidextrous to be using their left to fuck her. Felix couldn’t stop recording information like that if she tried, and it made her so mad, she choked on her answer as she came convulsing around their fingers. 

* * *

On Sunday, she fixed her watch. 

On Monday, two of her cases went to trial, so on Tuesday, Felix called the club to say she’d need to place her appointments on an indefinite hold, but would prefer to retain her membership.

On Saturday, she went over the court transcript from Thursday, rubbing her jaw and wondering what it was about the barrister’s argument that made the skin there feel raw.

This repeated roughly once. A couple of Wednesdays later, Miss Maple’s solicitor met with her to ensure that his defamation claim matched Felix’s discussions with him in counsel, and his trial had its verdict the next Friday. She made more phone calls, some of congratulations. She studied her calendar.

“I’m sorry,” xe said again, apologetic but firm. “I did try to save it, but that time has been taken this week. Would next Saturday work for you?”

Although she’d made the effort to discourage it among colleagues, Meg was very attuned to her. The cliché of the boss-secretary relationship itself was painful, but in almost every relevant dimension her attitudes reminded Felix of Marnie.

They got a sack lunch together at the Tesco by her old firm. She hadn’t been able to find another supermarket within a reasonable driving distance of her new one that stocked her brand of lox yet.

“Ugh, this is great. I hate the tube sometimes,” Meg said, her irrepressible energy making neat work of a bagel. 

“It’s important for freedom of movement,” Felix replied automatically, letting the wheel skim through her hands. “People need to be able to get places without a car. I use it all the time.” She shot her a pointed look. “So do a lot of our clients.”

Like Marnie, Meg refused to be chastised unfairly, a powerful trait to have for anyone intent on practicing law. 

“Yes, of course, I know that, but it could still be leagues better.” Her chin lifted a hair in the mirror. “Are you feeling alright? You’ve been really… snappy.”

Some of her agreed and some of her wanted to be contrarian. “I have.” Felix took the next turn. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. You know you can always tell me what’s wrong, right?” 

God, she was so sweet and young. “I know, Ms Christie. Thank you.”

* * *

Felix worked Tuesday through Friday and hit Saturday like a wall. 

She had to physically fight her way out of bed. Her camparis had taken a little stumble, fruit that she had to salvage fast before it rotted littering the balcony. Felix popped one whole and unwashed in her mouth just to feel something other than fatigue. Her body didn’t even want to pretend to be agile, and impatient with herself, she only ran a few blocks before turning back.

Ultimately, when she got like this, baking was what saved her. It filled her with a frank, purposeful optimism, and was something she could do mostly sitting down. 

She overdid it a bit, but Meg appreciated beer breads, and Felix could try to pass off the biscuits on Ms Aurora. Made a note of it in her phone to ask after her children, ask if they had allergies.

The club had a front entrance and two side entrances, east and west. The front was purely a facade to the public — staff did intake for the club there, but its main attractions were the sex shop and the theater, open to whoever who wanted to indulge in that. The east entrance was the one Felix usually took, less obvious and closer to the car park. 

The visor went on in the hallway, but not before going all the way down the elevator. Every time, its descent felt just like the field trip she’d taken some thirty years ago, walking hand in hand with the schoolteacher and her classmates into the underground belly of a naval base. Every time, she had to force herself to go down there, knowing there’d be light at the bottom, if she could just get to it.

The recovery chair was clean. Felix folded her clothes on top, worrying her lips with her tongue and thinking about what exactly it was she wanted to do. 

The door to the other room closed. She listened to them moving around inside as she adjusted her condom, staring into the nothing that was the almost-but-not-absolute dark.

The wall complained as her 8.00 p.m. partner felt around it, and then, in a split from routine, began to trace their way down to the hole. 

She held still, back to the horse. A yawning anxiety opened the spaces between her vertebrae as she heard them kneel on the floor.

“Do you think you’ll get away with it?” Felix asked calmly. 

They didn’t respond. That made sense. She was trying to reclaim some control. If her theory was correct, taking away control was their only reason for being there.

“I’m not interested in finding out who you are.” Felix genuinely meant it. “But if I tell the club about this, they’ll know enough. I think maybe breaking the rules like this arouses you. That’s fine. I’m not judging. But it’s not what I want, when I come here.”

Their face was so close to the opening that when they spoke it was like they were in the room with her. 

“I’ve reserved this hour as well.” They sounded confused. “Does that change anything?”

Felix felt the warmth leave her hands and face. “No. This isn’t an ultimatum.” She thought about putting her clothes back on and realized that while they might not’ve been able to make out her exact details, the exaggerated movements of her limbs would give her away. “You talk too much. You fucked with my protection.”

Their tone shifted lower. “Breaking rules doesn’t arouse me.” Something about that rang false, but not entirely. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” A pause. “Unless you ask, of course.”

That would be the day. “I’m not going to.”

“Fine,” they said, sounding as frustrated as Felix felt. “Then I’ll ask. Can I come over there?”

 **_What_** _._ “No,” she said with conviction. “Are you crazy?”

“For wanting to get around a wall?” they asked, plainly unimpressed. “Not for that, I don’t think I am. Why does the idea alarm you so much? What terrible, awful thing would happen?” They laughed, a little uneasily. “Was it bad?”

Felix wasn't sure if they were trying to provoke her, or frighten her, or have a real discussion about whether a sex club's code of conduct was too prudent a document. “I think you should leave.”

They groaned, the wall ringing faintly as they knocked their head against it. “And I think you should let me come over.”

Here was the thing: the doors locked from the inside. Unless Felix twisted the knob herself, it wasn’t going to open. The dividing wall was a steel sheet sunk through the ceiling and the floor. That they might earnestly try to kick in the door made her want to scream, was so hysterical she almost did, because it was all just so fucking ridiculous.

The hole was right there. She had a lubricated condom inside her stark naked body, and if they would just be courteous, and not run their mouth at her for an hour, there were a number of perfectly filthy things she’d allow them to do to her through it. That they’d _paid money_ to do to her through it.

“Are you married?”

Felix turned around from the chair, _are you?_ echoing uselessly in her head. “No.” 

“So, what? Why are you afraid? Let’s have it.” They dropped their rasping voice to a conspiring register and it made her toes curl against the floor. “A politician? A movie star? The foremost authority in your field?”

“I can leave if you won’t,” Felix said, throat like a stone.

“What’s stopping you?”

So many things. That she’d paid money for this, herself. Paid for three weeks of hating it, and two of craving it. That they scared her, a lot, and no, not all of it was rational.

 _I want you to tell me I’m right._ In the dark, her outrage was made something indisputable and righteous. _I want a real apology. I want you to beg._

She dressed. Wordlessly they listened to her do it, offering nothing, no apology, no vindication. The idea that they might follow her out of the building occurred to her and Felix dismissed it with her anger, turning it into the very reason why she was going. 

She’d just opened the door.

“I’ll be here next week,” they said. 

Felix slammed it behind her.

* * *

It was very close to midnight when she called Meg.

Being that she was breaking down herself, it made sense that a few professional boundaries would fall along the way. Still, her hands shook around the phone. Meg was in something like a dozen classes and twenty years her junior at least. It was a Saturday night. She probably had assignments to write. If she wasn’t up late working or partying, Felix hoped she was getting some sleep.

“Hi,” Meg yawned on the other end, like a drowsy puppy. “What’s up?”

“I just need,” Felix started, and then in an act of courageously evil self-sabotage, a sharp, horrible sting started welling up her throat, behind her eyes, in her nose. “I just need to hear someone talk for a while.”

“Ms Dimaanó! Ohhh, I’m here, Ms Dimaanó, it’s okay… I’m right here, it’s alright…”

Meg did a lot of cooing and awing around crying people. 

It’d struck her as patronizing, particularly around clients. But somehow, being on the receiving end of her consolations, the experience improved Felix’s view of the habit. There was something instinctive about it. Probably the kind of thing someone had done for her, and enough times that it stuck, when she was down and blue.

Meg talked to her about university, mainly — the subjects that were challenging her, a short relationship she’d struck up with a tutor that Felix hadn’t known of at the time. She asked redundant questions about the new and improved additions to Legal English they were work-shopping, told her to get a glass of water, a soft towel. She coaxed her to tell the story about how Miss Maple had first appeared, asking for their representation.

“Eighty-nine contests,” Felix said, her voice well on its way to ruined. “And still writing. I can’t believe he’s been remaindered in the States. Those cookbooks are a treasure, here.”

“You are, too, you know,” Meg whispered back, clearly very sleepy. “A treasure.”

Pressing a hand into her eyes, Felix licked her lips, and swallowed down her misery before it could return to undo all of her friend’s hard work. “I will never be able to find a better assistant.” 

* * *

On Wednesday, Felix’s 10.00 a.m. appointment cancelled. It was a good opportunity to brush up on what she’d forgotten since she’d last met with Gwak, and after paging through hir file, she was confident that zie would have her full and undivided focus.

In an hour.

what is it called when everything distracts you and you can’t come

Nothing. Some definitions. Self-help books on Butler for ADD. She rearranged the idea. Tried to specify the problem.

why is it so infuriating when people talk during sex and distract you

A lot of articles on anger management popped up, from the NHS and the Mind charity, with titles like _How to cope with anger_ mocking her in soothing, dark blue font. There was one page, full of promising phrases such as _Sex anxiety,_ and _Non-erotic Cognitive Distractions,_ but the body of the text itself was dense with medical jargon she didn’t have time to research. She bookmarked it for later.

i don’t understand how they make me come when i’m mad?

That got, to stretch the word, a relevant hit on a Q&A forum. Felix read too many of the replies. Most contained incredibly bad counseling at best. Some were downright concerning, or alluded to solutions that were illegal.

i’m scared to

Chewing her lip, Felix stared at the search bar.

She couldn’t finish the sentence. It wasn’t something as simple as a sentence. And if anyone had ever been plagued by her specific woes, the Internet probably had shit advice for them.

They were asking for something she couldn’t give. 

Without the wall, without the quiet and unspeaking covenant, it would be something else. What that was, Felix didn’t know. 

She did know that she was forty-three years old, and being unable to transact to the letter with a stranger on the other side of a glory hole had dazzled her with a fear so brilliant she wasn’t sure if she’d be in the right when she reported their behavior. That wasn’t healthy. 

But calling it what it was wouldn’t mean she’d solved it, either.

“Gwak is here!” Meg called from across the office. “Should I let hir know you’re ready?”

“Thank you, Meg,” Felix said, closing that tab on her computer and readying her notes. “Yes. Send hir in.”  
  


* * *

On Saturday, she went for a run.

Marnie hadn’t been buried. Her coffin wasn’t lowered into the ground, covered up with handfuls of dirt, or memorialized in homily. Marnie had been cremated weeks before their family would've had the chance to see what remained, her ashes scattered on common land the day of a hard rain.

People had walked through her. Ground her against the pavings with their shoes. Marnie was in the tiny, muddy creases, the deltas that snaked through the park’s pocked grass lanes, the English water table itself, returned to the earth and sky that’d born her. 

At least that idea had made their Buddhist father happy, for a minute. Felix figured it was marginally better than contributing to the overcrowded forest of a Catholic cemetery. 

She had the world mainly to herself, dodging through 6.00 a.m. fog toward Islington Green to see the place where her sister wasn’t buried. A bus was her companion for a few city blocks, its red wrapper advertising products her eyes slid over. According to an expert in such matters, it was bad for her knees and the ligaments in her feet to run on the pavement, so Felix ran in the road, wondering how it could be possible for her body to feel the difference between asphalt and concrete when her mind couldn’t. 

When she made it to the edge of the park, so hot and thirsty that it felt like she might never feel normal again, all Felix could think about was how glad she was that her endurance hadn’t taken a hit from two consecutive weekends of rest. 

She ran until she reached Myddelton’s fountain and slowed to a jolting halt before him, his marble clothing only becoming more absurd with the passage of time. She walked up to the war memorial’s twisted gray ring and stared through its hole. 

_Serves you right._

The best their beloved government could do. A cold, empty gesture from the ones who didn’t need consoling.

_Hope it was worth it._

It’d been long enough that it didn’t even make her angry anymore. 

Maybe she just thought these things to carry their old arguments forward. 

In fiction, Marnie’s grave site could’ve been something to goad her into confronting the object of her life’s unifying conflict. But Felix wasn’t a Danish prince. The stone didn’t open a portal. Her sister didn’t rise through it to accuse their mother of incest, or give her a quest to kill her uncle, or prophesy the future. 

Felix stumbled to the green, kissed the cleanest patch of grass she could find, and rubbed its freezing dew on her arms. Caught her breath. Started on the run back.

* * *

“Well, we’re sorry to lose you,” xe said, perturbed, but not about to question her. “As a reminder, the time is still yours, but we can notify your partners for tonight if you’ll be absent.”

“No, there’s no need,” Felix explained, flicking up a blind to look out her window at the neighborhood below. “I’ll be going.”

As she’d anticipated, almost half a day of waiting tested her resolve. Hundreds of different excuses occurred to her, were summarily dismissed, reformed and again presented themselves in dispute. She read _The Great Divorce_ , picking over a survivalist’s lunch for most of it. Nothing so dramatic as a last meal. Just something to digest and keep her going through the night.

She arrived a little early. Ten minutes was the standard grace period between reservations because it gave everyone the chance to come or go as they required. Felix sat in her car, waiting and combing through the contents of her purse with a critical eye. In the end, she left the knife behind.

The door to the other room closed. Felix inhaled slowly and spoke. 

“Is it you?”

They crossed to the wall, touched it. 

“I said I would be here,” they confirmed, precise, careful. “And you didn’t tell me not to be.”

“Not in those exact words.” Precision. Yes, she needed to be precise with them. “I’d like to try this again,” Felix went on, hand at her neck as though a firm grasp could soothe away her thundering heartbeat. “If you’re amenable.” 

“Of course,” they said reasonably. “Can I come over?”

“You can, if you’ll stick to some conditions,” Felix agreed.

At first, she thought they’d lapsed into silence because they were thinking it over. That would’ve made sense. 

Then Felix heard their door close, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe.

They knocked.

Like a janitor. 

Like Meg, when she wanted to catch an early bus.

Felix walked to where the door hugged the outer wall. She opened it, pulling it around her until the edge met the doorstop so that the low, yellow lights beaming from the floor in the hall wouldn’t touch her. So that she wouldn’t see them.

She closed it once she’d heard them clear the threshold. Then she turned back towards the center of the room, holding her hands out in front of her body, elbows bent.

Something brushed the flat of her right hand. Felix didn’t jump, or pull away. Lightly, they traced a path along it from knuckle to wrist, just feeling, their skin comfortably cool.

“Is that alright?”

It was incredibly difficult to speak, but she did it. “Yes.”

“Fabulous.” They continued to stroke her hand, back and forth, light as a feather. “Tell me what you want me to do.” 

The grainy lilt of their voice originated so far from their hand that it felt like it should’ve belonged to another person, and wasn’t that a terrifying thought. That there were two other people in the room with her, twice as many people to let down.

“I’m not coming back here,” Felix said all in a rush, because it had to be fast. “I canceled my membership. I can’t do this anymore. But I’m here tonight.”

The movement of their hand paused and then resumed, unchanged. “Alright,” they said quietly, breathing with her in the dark. “Okay. I understand.”

“And I don’t know what you want, exactly. I don’t know why the wall wasn’t enough. But if you’re going to do something to me, I want you to do it here, and I want you to do it now.”

For an impossibly long moment Felix listened to their silence. 

A hand came out of the invisible world around her and tipped her chin up.

“Where’s your chair?” they said, tickling her lips. Felix swallowed, and their lips parted, breathing a little tea-warm sweetness in her face. “Show me. Then I’ll give it to you.”

She took a step to the right. They turned with her. She took another, leading them. Together they waltzed to the opposite wall, to the recovery chair with her purse on the seat, her free hand groping the air as she felt for the metal ring of the back. 

They picked up her purse, the leather whispering as they handed it over. They sat down, the chair creaking. They spread their legs to either side of her, the heels of their shoes thumping against the floor. They undid their belt. Unzipped their flies. 

They sounded sincere. “I’d like to strip you.”

Cored straight through the middle, Felix let them. 

They smoothed their hands around her limbs, her hips. Plucked at the buttons of her shirt and slid off her underwear, dropping them in a pile nearby. “Did you bring a condom?”

Her hands were getting clammy. A strap of her purse escaped as she fished around in it for the box, her bottle of lube. Felix biffed it open with a nail and held out the package until they took it.

“Put a foot up,” they instructed hoarsely. Guided it between their legs, when she did, to balance the ball on the edge of the chair. “And talk to me, please. If you can.”

Felix stared into space as they pushed the ring inside of her and followed it with their fingers. “Do you smoke?” They were that sort of artistic length that wasn’t difficult to imagine cradling a cigarette, slim and graceful. 

“I used to,” they said, spreading the outer ring wide as they massaged her with sure, steady pumps. “Why, did you want a break?”

It was the tension, but she laughed, just a tiny hiccup. Uncapped the lube. “Put this in me.”

They did, scuffing at the floor with their heels. “If you wanted to make me really happy, you know. As a parting gift.” A thumb snuck its way up, up. “You could say that again.”

God, it was starting to feel good. Felix picked her foot off the chair, reached her hands out in search of some purchase — their chest, a shoulder under a denim jacket. They walked her over their spread thighs until she was standing above their lap. Shaking a bit, she eased down until she was seated, practically dangling. Pulled her knees in, her ankles in, knocking them against the stops of the chair.

“Christ,” they hissed, unmoving, hands firmly around her waist. 

Felix wondered whether they expected her to ride them. Her morning run had kind of obliterated that possibility, the delayed-onset of soreness already taking its toll. Then their nose touched hers gently, dragging across her cheek to tease an ear, and their hips rolled, slow and coaxing. “Tell me if the ring is bothering you.”

It didn’t make sense until she felt it. Why would her own condom bother her? Too many sensations had torn her focus into pieces when the stranger was just an intangible idea, but now it felt like there were thousands of things to notice: the thick pressure of their cock, the angle. The way their scrotum was so much softer than the material of their trousers. Their husky voice, the taste of it. Their fingernails in her back. 

They started grinding upward, whimpering, and the cock ring appeared, real and right there, rubbing hard as stone across her clit. Hidden behind the wall for weeks, a secret she hadn’t bothered to feel.

All she could do was rock on her toes. Claw back at them through their jacket. “Didn’t know,” she gasped. “You wore—a ring. Didn’t know.”

Their mouth was as big as their hands, or at least they felt that way in the dark. Felix was reminded of the sensory homunculus. If she tried, she could see its comically dramatized proportions, the torture of its diptych partner writhing across the human brain, hear her old classmates huff and whisper as the picture on the wall flickered, bright in the halo of the projector. She realized she could relate to it. She felt the same.

“Have to use it.” Their lips moved over her like a brand, across her jaw, straining to reach her throat, but she wanted them to stop that. “Need it to stay hard.” They sounded better on her tongue, like they were inside her head. “God, darling, are you—”

“ _Kiss me_ ,” Felix begged, and they barely had time to comply before she was fitting and shuddering apart.

* * *

They stroked her hair, after, and in that quiet afterglow, Felix almost wanted to know more. If they had a family. Had any children. Where they worked, and why. If they were nice all the time, or just when they were getting it. If they had a beautiful name. The color of their eyes.

“I’m forty-three,” Felix mumbled, curled around their chest. “In case that’s important.”

They rubbed a sore spot behind her neck. “Hello, forty-three,” they replied. 

_Good God._ “So, you must be...” She pretended to think. “A little bit older than that joke, huh?”

They smiled into her hair. “Only just. I’m fifty-one.”

Because she knew, finally, that it would be less of a hassle than fighting it, Felix let her mind take over the process of cataloging what her body had told her. They were bald, and that went for body hair, too. Ambidextrous. Maybe the tallest person she’d ever met. Incredibly fit for fifty-one years old. An ex-smoker. Funny, even if it was the corny kind of funny. They had some erectile dysfunction. They kissed like the Antichrist. 

Their sigh snuck its way under her ribcage and tugged at the things inside. “I wish you wouldn’t go.”

“This place isn’t for me anymore,” Felix said, not exactly to apologize, but because she felt they were owed it. “I have problems no one else deserves to fix.”

“That’s true of nearly everyone,” they hedged, maybe not exactly to lecture her, but because they felt she needed to hear it. “And I wouldn’t,” they added, softly. “Try to fix you, that is.”

Felix inhaled slowly and thought, admittedly attached to the feeling of their fingers on her skin. 

“That is what mortals misunderstand," she quoted haltingly, because though she'd only read it hours ago, her memory wasn't photographic. Had never been, in fact frequently failed her, and it was the feeling that'd stuck with her more than the words.

"They say of some temporal suffering, ‘ _No future bliss can make up for it.’_ Not knowing that heaven, once attained, will work backwards, and turn even that agony into a glory.”

It felt good to recite, though. Final. Like she’d read it just to pass it on to them.

“Sweetheart," Felix concluded. "Everyone I’ve ever met has tried to fix me.”

The stranger pulled their arms tight around her. “Darling,” they whispered. “I think—And this is just between you, me, and the lamppost. You mustn’t tell a soul. But if you leave here tonight, without giving me your number.” They pressed another kiss into her hair. “I think I may cry.”

She didn’t know what to make of that. 

“Okay,” Felix said. “Then I’ll give it to you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Source for the GIF of the [blinking text cursor.](https://beta.cent.co/doodz/+u8rqof)
> 
> To anyone reading this who has lost loved ones to imperialism; I love you, I feel you, and I hope you're doing okay.


End file.
